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Comment: No major changes?

Renewal of the Conservative mandate may be giving scientists in Britain
reason to be glum, but its implications extend further. European politicians
of all persuasions are looking worriedly to the future. Britain takes over
the presidency of the Community in July. It will be a sensitive six months:
many measures have still to be agreed in time for the New Year deadline
for the single market, while changes to Community procedure agreed last
year in Maastricht must be enacted. There are fears in Brussels that these
issues will not be easily resolved under the Community’s most reluctant
member, the country that alone of the 12 rejected the Social Charter and
its attempt to level the playing field of the single market for workers,
citizens and business.

Nowhere are Euro officials more downcast than those in the Community’s
Framework programme for research. It is one of the few programmes left after
Maastricht in which ministers must still approve the budget unanimously.
Britain has repeatedly blocked and cut the Framework budget in eleven-to-one
deadlocks.

Three key battles loom this year: proposals to increase the proportion
of Community funds spent on R&D over five years, proposals to tie the
next Framework programme more closely to specific industries, and proposals
to top up current funds so that they will not run out before the next programme
starts. The last Conservative government opposed all of these. Labour was
broadly in favour, raising hopes in Brussels that Community research might
stop being a constant cause for battle with Britain. Those hopes have now
been dashed to the ground.

The British presidency could have a crucial influence on the Community’s
transport policy. Earlier this year the Commission published a Green Paper
on measures to reduce the impact of transport on the environment. It argues
for a shift away from polluting forms of transport, such as road transport,
towards the railways; and from private cars in favour of public transport.
It also calls for a ministerial debate on the issues involved. So far there
has not been one. If the British government fails to act to initiate that
debate then the Green Paper will be overtaken by a separate White Paper
on transport, which is already in draft. It calls for a massive programme
of road building.

At home, though, Britain’s scientists have to put another general election
behind them and accept that they are in for another five years of conservatism
in government. Positive action is now what is called for from both scientists
and government. As the science minister, Alan Howarth, told one and all
not long before polling day, ‘the Conservative Party respects and values
British science and will back it intelligently and generously.’ Scientists
in Britain and Europe must not let him, or his successor, forget this. Likewise
the government must show in its actions and support that it intends to honour
this pledge. And that means serving up something better than the same old
policies as before.